PlayStation.Blog

MotorStorm Monday: Crashing in Pacific Rift

Today the staff at Evo are doing a little dance and breathing a huge sigh of relief. For today is the day of our fist gold master candidate, which as I write this is winging its way to assorted testers around the world ready for them to give MotorStorm: Pacific Rift one last hammering. This isn’t the end, chances are there still a few bugs to be fixed, but we’ve finished dessert, and are now just waiting for coffee and the bill. Phew.

But rather than browsing through vacation brochures, I thought this impasse would be best spent writing a few blog posts which answer some of the questions that have been floating around the internet about Pacific Rift. The first one of which I noticed is how many people I’ve seen decrying the fact the lovely little pause camera from the first game isn’t present in the recent demo.

Well guess what? We’ve taken it out because we’ve introduced a photo mode to the main game, essentially the old pause camera on steroids. Hopefully it will be a good substitute and give your greasy little paws something to do while the game is paused, other than just going to the khazi. No doubt some of you will probably use it for rubbing our noses into any graphical glitches you may find, or taking comedy pictures of dismounted drivers looking like they’re humping trees, but hopefully more of you will use it for grabbing some ace action pictures of the carnage and destruction we’ve worked so hard to give you in the game. You see we like the carnage in MotorStorm.

Years of doing more sanitized racing games, coupled with an unhealthy obsession with breaking stuff really made us try and push the boat out with the amount of things that falls apart in the game.

This desire for destruction gave us a few headaches when designing the game. The problem with racing games (and Motorsports in general) is that crashing is probably the most spectacular and exiting part of the whole affair. Unfortunately, crashing is also mutually exclusive to winning.

After much deliberation we were left with two solutions to the problem –

Option 1 – Every time you crash in MotorStorm one of our army of in-house vivisectionists ritually sacrifices a cute kitten to punish MotorStorm players and make sure they learn that crashing will only lead to kitty Armageddon.

Option 2 – Make crashes look awesome, dismember the vehicles, spew bits across the track, crumple them, crush them and toss the drivers into the path of other vehicles causing bigger and more spectacular crashes. Most importantly allow players involved in the crash to savor the carnage and then get back into the racing with as little time lost as possible.

Guess which one we picked?

The levels of destruction in the first MotorStorm were pretty good, but this time around we really wanted to go to town. First off we developed a completely new vehicle deformation system that realistically crumples mashed vehicles into twisted wrecks, as well as throw components across the track. The end results are, in our honest opinion, smashing (excuse the anglo-centric pun). Secondly we took a real close look at the way we throw ragdoll drivers around, because breaking cars is amusing, but seeing your driver fly through the air to land in a crumpled heap only to be run over by a monster truck, tossed around and end up as a hood ornament on a big rig is the pinnacle of the whole MotorStorm experience. Don’t worry though, it’s more ‘Tom and Jerry’ than ‘Faces of Death’. Good clean wholesome fun.

So, crash a lot, enjoy it, and send us your photo mode screenshots of all that lovely carnage. And if you’ve used photo mode to take pictures of things you think we got wrong, please address them to –

Neither M2 nor R2 have impressed me this year. Yes, numerous fixes and updates have been implemented, but it not ‘a new game’. It is nothing more than an addon for me. With all games coming up this fall, we have to pick only the best. Neither M2 nor R2 is on that list.

I personally don’t agree with lifeRPGs (1), but I respect his/her opinion (to be wrong). :P

Besides noticing the pause menu… “thing”, I’ve seen footage showing significant differences between the press release and demo versions. I’m not sure which one was which, but that’s a pretty important thing to point out. (ESPECIALLY if it’s the demo version that’s inferior.) It was in the PlayStation.com forums when I read about it.

Just curious: I am playing the M2 demo–and you can’t steer via motion sensing like you could in the M1 demo and game—–will that feature be in the final game? I love steering by motion sensing in MotorStorm—I am not a big racing fan but it was the feature that made MotorStorm stand out to me hehe!

It would have been sweet if for a few seconds your character will get thrown from the wind-shield or bike and then dodge the on coming players. If someone hits you they get extra boost or something. Maybe a trophy for so many hits.

Would you please comment about the difference between the Qore demo and the final game in graphics?
Why aren’t you creating more hype about your game with extensive footage from different tracks?
Thanks =)

Man im not sure what heppened me to me and this game. I just all of a sudden stopped playing it. I think the online glitching ruined my experience that first time around and i never tried again after the update.

I was one of the lucky ones that got the MotorStorm PS3 bundle. Now, when I got a PS3, I had no idea games were this fun.

MotorStorm blew my mind, I don’t have an HDTV, but the graphics make me say “Dear god…” Every time I play. And that was in the DESERT! This is in a beautiful tropical island full of beautiful objects to smash, AND look at!

I am getting Pacific Rift if I have to murder someone(Jokingly, of course)

But things I’d like to see improved(Which I hope they are), is the loading times. The general loading times were a bit annoying, and it was kind of crazy getting put on hold for a race because you switched your car and the loading times killed it.

I skipped on purchasing Pure because I really want to get M2 in October, I know it will be an amazing racer and M1 was already good, this will blow it out of the water. With M2 and Burnout Paradise, I’ll now have the 2 best arcade style racers on PS3.

I too agree with some other people here, I loved the motion steering in Motorstorm 1 and wish it would have come to MS 2.

I just found out this past weekend that there is motion steering in Burnout as well as stick steering, so wondering if maybe a future update could incorporate this as well into Motorstorm 2…(have an option if you like the stick for steering use it, if you want motion steering, chose that option).

Good to hear of a photo mode! Youtube support would kick ass as well, but I know that’s only a pipe dream…Maybe with the PS4 eh? Anyway, this should be fun especially considering it’s going to have splitscreen!

Please please tell me this has freind invites and then the game is mine. The fact that gta 5 prologue or whatever its called does not have this feature was a bloddy big mistake and the reason it collects virtual dust on my hard drive.

I know you hate references to xbox but the freind invite thing is a must on all games.

Nigel, thanks for assuring the “Lunatics” out there in Motorstorm land that the PAUSE camera has been implemented with the PHOTO mode. One of the best things in Motorstorm for me was the ability to just gawk at the beautiful 720p carnage, and I’m glad Evo has improved upon that ability for Motorstorm Pacific Rift.

I am also glad to learn that the physical carnage will be improved upon as well over Motorstorm. Maybe the marketers can put that on the back of the box “New and Improved Carnage” :D

My anticipation for Motorstorm Pacific Rift has been fueled back up again, thanks for keeping us informed!!

Great post, thanks for the update on the photo mode. Not that you care, but I didn’t buy Motorstorm but I will definitely be buying Motorstorm 2!

“crashing is also mutually exclusive to winning.” – well put and you’ve captured the only reason my wife likes racing games. Hopefully she’ll think it’s more fun to win a few – but most likely, she’ll have the most fun with the crashes again. Why can’t she get past the first level?

@23 I’m pretty sure Motorstorm Pacific Rift will have Motion Steering, as all the preview information of the game on the ‘net indicates so. Also, as you said, it was in Motorstorm. The demo for Motorstorm Pacific Rift actually has it stated in the controller command diagram loading screen that there is a tilt feature but it just wasn’t built into the demo gameplay itself. Sort of like the photo mode wasn’t, but will be in the full retail version of the game.

Option 1 – Every time you crash in MotorStorm one of our army of in-house vivisectionists ritually sacrifices a cute kitten to punish MotorStorm players and make sure they learn that crashing will only lead to kitty Armageddon.

The crashes are cool. But what I like and what I love doing most in video games is BLOW SH** UP. Big expolsions !!!! :-) M2+R2=locked in room for days!! This is going to be the bigest holday season sony has ever seen!!!!! And at lest it is not a boring RPG @1 Trolls got to love them :-)